Page 147 of Tracking Snow

"The treatment worked on you," Queenie snaps. She strides over and snatches the IV line from its hook. "Progress requires trial and error. You should be thanking me."

"You killed my friend. You stole a piece of me. You fractured and rejected your own son." I wrench against the straps again. "I’m going to kill you, lady!"

Behind Queenie, Six flinches.

His green eyes flash white, then pink. The colors start changing faster, each of them pushing at the others as his gaze moves from the needle in Queenie’s hand to the people strapped along the wall.

Queenie feeds the IV line through her fingers. "We are on the verge of saving the world. Of putting things right."

"What is your damage, lady?" My shoulder burns as I fight to pull my hand through the restraint. "Who hurt you so badly you decided to kill everyone who isn’t like you?"

Queenie’s hands pause over the needle.

She shakes her head and gives me that same soft, pitying smile she used during every Brightpath Christmas visit.

"No one did anything to me. I’m trying to help you. Haven’t you been listening?" She gestures toward the unconscious bodies lining the wall. "The answer isn’t eradication. It requires a cleansing. That’s why you’re here."

"You mean like you helped your son?" I jerk against the restraints. "That’s what happened, isn’t it? You tried to fix him, and you ended up splitting him into pieces."

Six’s face floods with shame.

My anger cuts so sharply it hurts.

He delivered my friends here, but he was also the first child she strapped down. A five-year-old boy who brought a cat back to life and learned that made him unworthy of his mother’s love.

"She doesn’t want to save you. She wants to kill every part of you that doesn’t fit inside her perfect little box. That’s not love." I wrench against the straps until pain shoots through my wrists. "Four is already gone. I can’t lose the rest of you too."

Six’s face empties of all emotion, and I fear I’ve lost him. All of them. I can’t compete with the promise of his mother’s love.

That’s why they always warn you not to fall for a mama’s boy. It never ends well.

Queenie studies him. "Yes, I heard the redheaded mage successfully cleansed one of the abilities."

"His name was Four," I snap. "He was a person and he’s dead. You probably don’t even care. Are you happy there is one less bit of magic and life in him?"

Queenie’s attention returns to me. "If the remaining fractures must follow in our attempt to cure this horrible affliction, so be it. My son died the day this disease took hold of him."

"They are your son!" I scream. "Six, look at me."

His green eyes find mine through the colors fighting to take over.

"Seven, I think you want your mother’s love, miss it more than anything, but I’m telling you, she’ll never give it to you. You’ll never be good enough. Not for her. But you are amazing, and magic in every wonderful sense of the word and I wish you’d love yourself even a fraction as much as I love you."

Queenie’s eyes dart between us rapidly. "That’s enough. The Seven, I need you to leave. We have work to get to and I can’t have you dawdling around. Now go." She moves to talk to one of the scientists.

"No." The word comes out layered, like all seven of them shoved into the same syllable.

Queenie stops, then slowly faces Six as if she can’t believe what she’s hearing. Except it’s not Six.

The colors have stopped fighting and layered up instead, all seven crammed into two irises, and for the first time since I met this man, the whole of him is looking out of his own face.

Chapter 45

The Most Powerful Kiss

THE SEVEN - ALL OF US

"You’re never going to love me, are you, Mother?" we ask, clarity settling in so coldly it’s hard to see why we didn’t realize it before. "Us," we correct. "You don’t love us."